Why VMware is a leader in hybrid cloud management solutions

A recent report from the research giant Forrester has identified VMware as a leader in the hybrid cloud management field, with particular emphasis placed on its cloud monitoring, product vision and market approach.

The Forrester Wave: Hybrid Cloud Management, Q2 2018 report used a 31-criteria evaluation of hybrid cloud management providers to identify the 12 most significant ones. Out of these, VMware was positioned as a leader, achieving the highest possible score in the cloud monitoring, product vision, market approach and partner ecosystem criteria.

The report states that, “VMware’s vRealize Suite extends its strong management capabilities for vSphere- and vCloud-based environments/providers to AWS and Azure.”

It goes on to identify vRealize’s strengths as its customer numbers, template and workflow designers, capacity monitoring, partnerships, and prebuilt integrations.

Furthermore, it confirms that VMware’s goal is to make clouds invisible by delivering a complete management experience that accurately serves all personas – not just operations. It also recognises that the company is building out SaaS-versions of its newer management products – especially those catering to developers or DevOps – through independent services.

Key criteria for inclusion in the report included:

• The solution must be a multipurpose suite that provides a variety of cloud management capabilities, together with management for generic workloads (in other words not just specialising in the management of a specific workload, infrastructure type or vertical).
• It must provide cost monitoring and optimisation insights for AWS, Azure, and vSphere-based clouds – others are helpful but these three were viewed as the minimum.

At a more general level the report also indicates that infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals are looking for simple tools that help to optimise costs and govern cloud usage across various platforms. This is in response to the realisation that market growth stems from increasing multi-cloud usage, complexity and rates of change.

I&O professionals are also increasingly trusting hybrid cloud management solutions to educate them on platform best practices and to act as fully automated, optimisation solutions.

Ajay Singh, senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Management Business Unit at VMware was obviously delighted with the recognition, saying, “We believe being named a leader is consistent with our size and scale and reflects our commitment to innovation across a broad portfolio of multi-cloud products and services that enable customers to accelerate their digital transformation journey.”